Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Boxing Day ===Steph===Time Out of Joint

Well today is the day after Christmas, celebrated in British tradition as the day of exchanging gifts, presumably in boxes.  It’s actually after midnight , 1247 hours, 27-12-10 to use the continental time and date format.  We have had a holiday from blogging for a couple of weeks, storing up more adventures and tall tales from the islands on the other side of the stream. Judy and I are taking shifts at anchor watch again as the cold fronts which have been bringing snow and blizzard conditions on shore bring high winds and cooler air here.  It’s still mostly short pants, with wind breaker and wind pants during the blows.  For me it’s sweat pants, long sleeves, fleece, socks, wind breaker and wind pants. J  The high winds are a challenge for boats at anchor.
Phil Goldberg, a long time friend and avid follower of these writings has commented about the chronology of our postings.  He points out that it may be hard to sift out the who and when of the jottings.  This is a work in progress, and any feedback is welcome.  We are now able to share some pictures of the scenes and events we write about, and would love to share some video clips if speed and bandwidth were only available.  Unfortunately it’s not.  Phil took our suggestion to get Skype, and we shared some face time before we left Nassau while still on the “Atlantis Wi-Fi.” We could see and hear Phil sitting in his office cum studio fiddling with the keyboard. Our next Wi-Fi opportunity didn’t support Skype or social networks for lack of capacity.
In an e-mail we received two days ago, Phil suggested that we identify the date and writer of each entry.  Here’s the skinny on that. Judy and I take turns writing, as the spirit moves us. Mostly we cover an event to each other’s satisfaction, with editorial comment, asides and insertions by the other set in italics. As previously noted our journal is always behind the times. We actually don’t have a calendar, and ever since my watchband broke, I stopped carrying a watch.  Of course at that time I had a cell phone and my watch was redundant.  Now my cell phone is at home and the only way I know what day it is is by reading my pillbox.  The point being (and Phil hit the nail on the head,) we are living on Island Time and do not have a firm grip on dates.  I rely somewhat on the yellow dates on the bottom of my photos to tell me where I was and when. The GPS track also logs our movements with the exactitude of satellite time. 
To further amuse, amaze, and confuse you, BLOG/CENTRAL lists our postings by the dates they were sent on-line.  They are also found in reverse chronological order, i.e., most recent is on top, with older dates below, unlike a book which begins in the beginning and ends at the back near the index. Recently we posted a few weeks worth of stories, covering a few weeks of our trip and written over the course of a few weeks.  When the Wi-Fi window opened, we submitted the work in batches, attempting to maintain the established sequence.  The mechanics of submitting text and smallified photos is time consuming under these 20th century conditions, none the less we posted about a half a dozen events in a couple of days.  BLOG/CENTRAL gives the appearance that those events all happened at that time.  Not so..  Therefore, please bear with us as we attempt to battle the clock, the calendar, mental lapses, Island Time, and BLOG/CENTRAL.  As they used to say in the days when everyone had a started web-page      SITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION.”

2 comments:

  1. Have more fun, write shorter posts.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I vote for continuing the long posts and we'll try to figure it out.

    ReplyDelete